I’ve been unable to nail down precisely why I don’t like how WikiLeaks is releasing hidden, secret, classified, and other categories of U.S. government information. I don’t believe the United States deserves the shroud of secrecy that protects incompetent, illegal, and malicious acts; neither do I trust Julian Assange’s motives, presentation, or redaction. Every time I try to talk about the issue, it’s like a life-or-death game of “paper or plastic bags” at the supermarket. Thankfully, Clay Shirky has laid bare the cognitive dissonance and teased apart distinctly different ideas that are being lumped into single categories:

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older news

“So why so much ado about these leaks? For one thing, they say what any savvy observer already knows: that the embassies, at least since the end of World War II, and since heads of state can call each other up or fly over to meet for dinner, have lost their diplomatic function and, but for the occasional ceremonial function, have morphed into espionage centres. Anyone who watches investigative documentaries knows that full well, and it is only out of hypocrisy that we feign ignorance. Still, repeating that in public constitutes a breach of the duty of hypocrisy, and puts American diplomacy in a lousy light.[…]

Julian Assange, Information AnarchistWall Street JournalThe cable reported that Dr. Vahedi decided to escape by horseback over the mountains of western Iran and into Turkey. He trained by hiking the hills above

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks, which quote Arab leaders who urged the United States to bomb Iran?s nuclear facilities, as ?American psychological warfare,? saying that this would not affect his country?s relations with other countries. I suspect Ahmadinejad was well aware that the leaks were not an American conspiracy and that he was only attempting to control the damage the documents may cause for his government.

A secret State Department cable released by WikiLeaks on Sunday, Dec. 5, provides in almost numbing detail a list of foreign critical infrastructure and key resources (CI/KR) vital to the national security of the United States. Though there’s little in the way of analysis and no security information provided in the cable, it reads as a terrorist’s holiday wish list.

The recent leak of U.S. ?diplomatic cables? by Wikileaks implicated two Malaysian firms for allegedly being involved in ?a network controlled by Iran to purchase missile technology from China? but did not generate much buzz among the country?s citizens, with more attention being paid to domestic affairs.

Saudi Arabia has made “important progress” in aggressively trying to curtail the flow of funds to terrorist groups, but the oil rich kingdom and its Gulf Arab neighbors still remain major sources of financing for militant movements like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, according to leaked U.S. government documents.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton viewed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as a “behind the scenes puppeteer” dissatisfied with his role, a diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks shows.

“There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.” ? Joseph Pulitzer.

At approximately 6pm on Wednesday, Amazon ousted wikileaks.org from its servers after concerted and aggressive political pressure from America?s Homeland Security Committee. The move came after three solid days of ?Cablegate? ? the largest intelligence leak in history. 251,287 dispatches from more than 250 US embassies and consulates, to be published slowly but surely in the weeks and months ahead. Among them are allegations of corruption, cover-ups and secret collusion between US and UK officials; dirty tactics exposed on a grand scale. Politicians, diplomats and corporations across the world must now be trembling. Could they be next?

In an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, lawyer Mark Stephens said:

“In Sweden it’s quite bizarre though, because the chief prosecutor, the director of public prosecution in Sweden dropped the entire case against him, saying there was absolutely nothing for him to face, back in September. And then, a few weeks ago, after the intervention of a Swedish politician, a new prosecutor, not in Stockholm, where Julian and these women had been, but in Gothenburg, began a new case, which of course has resulted in these warrants and of course the Interpol red notice being put out across this week.

“The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops,” wrote John Perry Barlow on Twitter.

The censorship vs. free speech battle is escalating. This week has seen Amazon, Tableau, EveryDNS and PayPal dropping WikiLeaks services in quick succession, DDoS attacks that caused the site to go offline multiple times, and mounting political pressure from the US (2), Australian and French governments.

Everyone who has represented the U.S. abroad knows what it?s like to be among fellow Americans who haven?t the foggiest notion of what the State Department does or, for that matter, what on earth diplomacy is good for. Julian Assange and Wikileaks may have lifted the veil. That’s not entirely to the bad.

Among the hundreds of confidential US diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks thus far, very few have dealt with Washington?s relations with the EU. But occasionally, EU leaders have popped up in summaries of other international events in which they have only tangentially been involved. The most pointed EU-related revelation to be released thus far comes in […]

Twitter is “censoring” discussion of Wikileaks by preventing it becoming a trending topic, writes blogger Bubbloy. As he points out with some neat research, the popularity of Wikileaks discussion far outstrips that of the pop culture ephemera that does trend. But is there a clue in the fact Twitter’s feature isn’t called ‘popular topics?’ Perhaps the #Wikileaks tag has already experienced so much chatter that it’s become algorithmically unlikely to retrend. If so, perhaps a page for trending topic ‘graduates’ ? or at least a limit on the algorithmic relevance of last year’s spikes ? would be nice.

Since the WikiLeaks documents surfaced, Turkish political actors have been searching for the answer to the following question: Who is behind the WikiLeaks incident? Related to this question, most Turkish political observers and opinion makers have tended to explain the process within the paradigms of the old world in which one or more states play critical roles to gain political benefits for their own interests.

These documents are the dreadful hypocrisy of the international system that is working under the hegemony of the USA. They utterly confirm the opinions put forward by the social and political opposition and anti-militaristic and democratic forces on the topic of mutual distrust and calculations based on elections.

from Journalist in Turkey, background articles, news and weblog about by Fréderike Geerdink

Turkish politicians are very honest. You will, for example, never see CHP leader Kilicdaroglu warmly shake hands with Prime Minister Erdogan and tell him that the AKP government has made such a great contribution to the self-confident positioning of Turkey on the world diplomatic stage. And Prime Minister Erdogan would in return never thank Kilicdaroglu […]

1 thought on “Julian Assange arrested, not the Digital Revolution….”

Arrested the genoese Assange
As the Australian Italian Assange also want him in jail. The spy who stole confidential documents and electronic cable financiers, lawyers, professors, Iranians, social centers will end up in prison.
The trap of the secret services for quite a while will no longer bother. Unless you leave the computer (as Assange). Could intercede for him his friend Putin (including former secret agents, there is always a bit of solidarity).
From Il Secolo XIX newspaper of Genoa today:
Pesto?s Wikileaks, the Genoese Assange ends with arrests
Altana Peter, 45 years old, a former secret service employee, for newspapers and many blogs has become a sort of genoese Julian Assange. And the constant and widespread dissemination of confidential files on the business full-bodied of Genoa (maxi mergers of public companies, studies on the revolutions of the traffic, background information on the work of luminaries of science and especially malfeasance within the bank) keeps close to the figure of at least the suggestion Australian journalist, who made her blush with cable chancelleries over the world.
Doing the right proportions of fame and weight of the mutual scoop, there is another detail in common with a few hours, and is purely judicial. As the creator of Wikileaks, a few days ago, was jailed in London for a crime “disconnected” to the pandemonium of these days (the accusation of rape is to have two Swedish girls forced to have unprotected sex) as well the 007 that targets the Genoese came to a standstill, in this case “home”. Proved fatal to the conviction ‘final’ documents for stolen many years ago. At the same time, Altana, is one of the main suspects for the files that between October and November were circulated through the Indymedia site antagonist, confidential documents against the Carige bank, secret messages inside your local authorities or the scientific director of the Gaslini Hospital, Lorenzo Moretta.